World Book Day: Raising a reader

The “first book of the day” is my favourite time of day. Where once reading was confined to commutes and evenings, now the day begins with it. It’s reading with a different purpose, though. Not reading to learn more, or reading to find new ideas – it’s reading to inculcate, to indoctrinate even. Every morning, I read one of a selection of my favourite Julia Donaldson books to my one-year-old son.

I’ve spent my career working in secondary schools and thinking about reading from that perspective, so this feels like a diversion of sorts. I’ve spent years thinking about how we can get teenagers to love reading, how we can remediate some of the poor reading habits learned, or instil habits never learned. I’ve thought about phonics and its role in the secondary school. And I’ve come to believe, as an educator, that our focus is best placed on teaching children how to read, rather than encouraging a love of reading (which, after all, is unlikely to follow on from illiteracy).

What if he hates books?

Yet now I have the undeniable privilege of time and knowledge to read with my own child, and it feels like the stakes could not be higher. What if he hates books? What if he never picks one up? What if he finds reading difficult, and so never does it, and so never gets any better at it? What if his lack of reading ability leads to his being, like so many hundreds of thousands of adults, locked out of adult conversation, unable to access the basics?

So I’ve simplified it in my head. What I’m trying to do is make reading a habit. It’s something we do every day, and it is fun, and it is normal. Daniel Willingham’s Raising Kids Who Read shares the positive message parents who love reading, have lots of books, and read with joy to their own children consistently send: “reading brings pleasure.” So we read the same small selection of books in the morning – the weekends are where the variety comes in and we just crack through anything and everything as he exercises his curiosity. In the mornings, it’s all about familiarity. I imagine, because I have heard from more seasoned parents, this ritual will end with him knowing these books off by heart; that he will turn up to school with a tremendous privilege because as soon as his teacher takes out Room on the Broom they will be convinced he is a genius as he “reads” every word perfectly. Stephen Chiger in Love and Literacy says that “researchers note that when students develop a ‘reading self-concept’ – a sense that being a reader is part of who they are – a virtuous cycle of growth begins.”

I wonder if that will build a love of reading, because we are motivated by what we are good at, and knowing a book well definitely gives you the illusion that you are a very good reader. When I’ve worked with children with more severe learning difficulties in the past, part of our work has been to break down the story so they come to complex texts with a sense of confidence: they are motivated to read and learn Macbeth because at least they know what is going on – they feel like they have conquered the first, and hardest, step, and, where our work has preceded the lesson, their grasp of the plot is actually superior to their peers, giving them the motivation boost of such a head start. Willingham writes that “raising a reader arguably begins and ends with motivation.”

I’m not an expert on reading by any means – I’ve just read a lot of books about it. Similarly, this little person we get an opportunity to shape isn’t an expert in reading. But I will be able to make sure he reads a lot of books.